More ground level news: their latest release is by the breaks giants Pyramid. The picto-brain was asked to create the cover art for the track ‘Steal Tonight’, which is awesome, and to turn it in to a short promo video. As the image was created in photoshop, it was quite straight forward to animate the layers in premiere pro and sync to the sample of the track, both can be found below.

The track is available on beatport [here] and you can also follow pyramid on twitter [here] too. Enjoy.

Flipping back to the positive, a new release for Ground Level means another piece of design for music goes out to the ether today too. This time round its Joe C with the track ‘Kamikaze’ and a remix from label boss Andy McAllister, which you can listen to (and buy… *coughs*) here.

Recently, the picto-brain offered to create the artwork for the talented Jo Lewis’ next release. After a conversation over a beverage or two, armed with the titles, a little insight in to the stories behind the songs and a page of notes on appropriate colours, moods and themes, the ‘brain set to work whilst listening to the ep.

The concept artwork was delivered, and although Jo liked the layered image, she has opted for a more traditional cover with a striking self portrait.

You can’t win them all, so the saying goes, and it was an interesting creative project none the less.

Check out Jo’s music here and keep an eye on her facebook page for updates on the forthcoming ep.

I have a few friends who are graffiti artists and in recent conversations, I was informed of some of the ‘etiquette’ of the art form. Some of these rules included: a- to not spray near an established artists work to gain kudos from their piece, and b- to not cover over another piece of work if it still looks reasonably fresh, just to get a good location.

Well…

In defence of the picto-brain, it was done digitally – no actual art was harmed in the creation of a piece of design.

A brief required an image of a wall by a road… stock image sites had been trawled with no luck… Then I remembered a photo I took just off Brick Lane… with a little photoshop magic it was the perfect wall…

I really like this piece by Guy Denning and ‘painting’ it out felt quite wrong but, its a great wall and at least it wasn’t real. The finished piece of design is for a music download (hence the square crop) and can’t be revealed until the tracks go public – keep your ears and eyes open people.